Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Porcupine cribs

I recently made some porcupine cribs as per the Pennsylvania Fish & Game specifications out of 2" x 2" hemlock. They sat on the ice for a month but finally have made their way to their intended home on the bottom in a place where the highest point is in 6 to 8 feet deep.

I do believe now (after looking at them sitting on the ice for a month) that they will snag a nice collection of hooks in their lifetime. Are there any special hooks or lures that are more snag resistant?

Hey Pa,

FWIW in my experience, Aberdeen hooks (the gold ones) are softer and will bend to let you release from a snag easier. If you pinch the barb down they are even more forgiving.

Bill D.

Circle hooks seem to be a little more snag resitant.

Texas rigged plastics will work around this type of structure. I like your structure.

Tracy

Tracy, I worm fish but pretty well go weightless on the ponds. It is less obtrusive and doesn't get hung up nearly as bad. A stout spinning rig is pretty much the answer for my pond bass fishing.

Hey,

I was wondering if you have the instructions on how to build the porcupine cribs, if so could I get them from you?

Cribs made out of various types of plastic pipe would have less of a tendency to float and less likely to snag hooks.

The Pennsylvania fish and game commission has these plans on their site. I followed their design including making the template to start the base on. They were easy to build and I will say 2 years in they do attract fish. I mounted a foam filled plastic bottle on a line to mark each piece of structure and now I just cast over the structure or drop a line down from my boat and never suffer from lack of a hit.

I had a local sawmill cut up some hemlock into 2x2 pieces so everything went as per their plans.

This is their pdf;

http://www.fishandboat.com/Resource/Documents/lake_structure2_porc2.pdf

As far as my fears of snagging my hooks on the structure, I took the circle hooks suggestion and that seems to do the trick.

Whoops, that didn't include the base jig which helps if you are making more than one.

This is the base jig pdf.

http://www.fishandboat.com/Resource/Documents/BaseJig.pdf

I have built and placed two different cribs in the pond. One made from pvc with plastic lattice to surround it and an old used plastic Christmas tree inside the crib and the second was built using pallets with cinder blocks added as a rock pile inside the crib. I can not see under the water to see which hold more or bigger fish